Religion or Atheism? An open forum.

[MMI]

My stand is that, since there is no evidence for gods, there is no reason to think that they exist, therefore I do not believe in any gods.

You reject blind faith and/or revelation, although all religious faith is based on either or both of those.

Rather than saying "you can't", I would say, "you haven't." Once again, we cannot make the definitive statement "you can't" because we don't know for certain whether someday someone just might!

My point exactly

The existence of the universe, or of life, is not evidence for either argument. IF you could prove a god exists you would then still have to prove that he created the universe and was not, himself, a creation of it!

A god who is not supernatural is not what we are debating, although I agree that a supernatural god might not be the Creator. But existence implies a creator to our feeble intellects and the only possible candidates are a supernatural creator or spontaneous creation. As I've said before, an eternal creator who is not bound by the laws of science seems more plausible (!) than an inconceivably large amount of energy and mass erupting out of nothing at all at some point in the past, for no evident reason, when that flies in the face of all laws of science as we know them. If an atheist claims rational analysis as the bedrock of his position, how does he explain spontaneous creation?

Of course, he could fall back on the Steady State theory, but that's fantastic too!

Claiming that there something exists, without evidence, is vastly different than claiming that something probably doesn't exist because there is no evidence for it.

We're back to the faith/revelation v evidence argument again.

They've come pretty close to that already. Not quite there, certainly, but they can certainly explain the existence of just about everything in the universe from the first tiny fraction of a second after the big bang on up to the present. Granted, we don't know what happened in that first tiny fraction of a second, or what happened before that, and we may never know. But saying, "We can't know, therefore God!" is silly.

Theories! Thought experiments and maths only. What is more, the religions have a complete answer!

Personally, I find the spontaneous creation far more rational than the supernatural creation. For then you have to explain the existence of the supernatural agent. Where did God come from? How was HE created?

God is eternal - came from nowhere we can comprehend, and not created. If an atheist can accept an uncaused cause leading to the creation of the universe, why can not a god also be uncaused?

Yeah, I don't understand it either. I didn't see anything in the article which explains how we could all be an illusion.

Maybe it was a nod in the direction of Plato's Cave

If God exists and is benevolent, he would not interfere in the world, whatever befalls it, except to rescue it entirely.

I don't see benevolence in this stance. I see indifference.

Yes, indifference. Otherwise he would be unjustly favouring individuals, and we all know, God is just.

What I denounce about religion is not the fact that they believe, but the fact that they seem to want to FORCE everyone else to believe, just as they do. They want to brainwash MY children and grandchildren, not just their own. They want to STOP the science which disproves so much of their beliefs, claiming that the only necessary answer is God.

That view, which I see as a mixture of paranoia and exaggeration worthy of a tipsy Orangeman on 12th July can be turned on its head; if you stop religions proselytising, you cut of their life blood and will kill them all off.

Only the extreme religions deny the value and validity of science. Most religions embrace science, knowing it is limited to describing the natural world. Proof of god goes beyond science.

But religion is not about faith. It's about control.

In a different discussion, I'd be inclined to agree, but, in fact, religion is about explaining life and giving it meaning. Cynical individuals have bent religion to their own agendas, and they cannot be regarded as religious at all. They do not deny god, as we do, but they clearly have no fear of him.